Tech and the uncanny

Sarah Angliss is a composer, automatist and sound historian, fascinated with the uncanny (Das Unheimliche) - an idea she researches through her performance, her robotic creations and in the archives.

The uncanny is the familiar, presented in an unfamiliar form, something we find strangely compelling yet unsettling. It’s the voice message that remains after death, the ventriloquist’s dummy, the hyper-real video game character or the Doppelgänger of folklore.

At dConstruct, Sarah will consider how we can harness the uncanny to make digital experiences more compelling. She’ll also be exploring moments in history when technology, from phonographs to mobile phones, seemed to take on a peculiar caste - causing fault lines in our understanding of human identity.

According to Sarah, if you’re looking for the next revolution in telecommunications, go in search of the uncanny.